Sunday, May 22, 2011
Korean names
I can memorize a classful of student names really quickly. For some reason, however, I find Korean names very challenging. First there is the issue of what to call an older Korean man or woman. In our classes we infantilize everyone. Even my 70 year old student from Oaxaca is Carmen, and I let my students address me by my first name, too. This is, part of modern American culture. . However, I know it would seem disrespectful to address an older Korean by his or her first name. Usually I ask them how they want to be addressed. Younger people, though, are addressed by first and second names. I find the tones or maybe they are dipthongs, of the vowels a bit hard to reproduce and I tend to get the names switched. So when I am in a class with new Korean students, I use a little cheat sheet, I keep the names written on my papers and I sneak a peak at them before calling on the student..
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The difficult task for middle school and high school teachers to memorize 150+ names at the beginning of the school year. I refer to my seating chart constantly and do lots of comprehension checks to learn my students' name.
ReplyDeleteI always address my students with Ms. or Mr. followed by their last name. I usually ask students how they would like to be addressed in the classroom in order to make them feel comfortable. I also train my students to stand-up and greet adults and the school principal whenever they enter the classroom to show respect. It could be problematic when students comming from a diffirent cultural background cannot adapt to a new culture.